SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2024

1:00 pm

Senior Symphony
Carter Simmons, Music Director
Guest Artist Lulu Altman

Bradley Symphony Center

Good Afternoon,

Thank you so much for attending this concert of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Senior Symphony. It is an honor to perform for you. We are especially grateful to both Make-A-Wish® Wisconsin for their vision and for the beautiful and courageous heart of this afternoon’s guest artist, Lulu Altman. We love you, Lulu!

The program we present today honors the growing canon of orchestral repertoire and reflects the beautiful diversity of the world we are shaping. It is our hope that you will savor the special, vibrant music-making of our beloved youth orchestra. The musicians on stage are each wonderful young individuals who represent many backgrounds and, as young people do, pursue varied interests beyond music. Together, as an orchestra, they are a powerful and transcendent expression of what is good in the world. We believe that this orchestra truly reflects the best qualities of our country.

We hope you enjoy our concert, and that the music we make and feelings we share today remain with you as fond memories of our time together. Best wishes from your friends at the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, and thank you for giving us this wonderful experience.

Carter Simmons
Artistic and Music Director

DIETRICH BUXTEHUDE (1637-1707)

arr. Carlos Chavez

Chaconne in E Minor

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875-1912)

Ballade in A Minor, Op. 33 (1898)

Lulu's Wish

“September Song” from Knickerbocker Holiday by Kurt Weill

“Pink” from War Paint by Scott Frankel

“As If We Never Said Goodbye” from Sunset Boulevard by Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Maybe This Time” from Cabaret by John Kander

INTERMISSION

HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959) 

Bachianas Brasileiras No. 8 (1944)

1. 1. Prelúdio
   2. Ária
   3. Tocata
   4. Fuga

FIRST VIOLIN

Hans Hemann, Concertmaster

Magdalena Masur, Concertmaster

Henry Snavely, Concertmaster

Jayanth Suthan, Concertmaster

Benyamin Kim

Titus Veldhouse

Christianna Ebel

Rosy Kojis

Lucas LaBeau

Brynn Nelson

Andrea Hanna

Kayami Jackson

Emilia Sato

Maia Cardew

Sal Stein

Isabella Krynicka

Ben Christiaansen

Madeline Bingenheimer

Alexander Chen

Nathanael Chu

Valkyrie Ladd

Yiwen Ma

Krish Vasudev

Ariana Augustine

SECOND VIOLIN

Nishanth Suthan

Samuel Botshtein

Johana Kim

Lexi Mabini

Norah Boerner

Dana Kim

Aris Arvanetes

Simon Doerr

Benjamin Jiang

Brady Ahler

Flynn O’Rear

Logan Gleesing

Ipek Yilmaz

Rebecca Brojanac

Suraksha Kodgi

Ruthee Rosploch

Soren Ellingstad

Avana Kelly

Owen Bell

Emerson Neldner

Emerson LaWall-Shane

Alexandra Holzman

VIOLA

Sonya Wilhelm, Principal

Brae Bigelow, Assistant Principal

Rem Leach

Violet Lucier

Levi Stein

Alana Perez

Haley Burns

Spencer Laga

Akilah Muhammad

Cassidy Quandt

Gregory Farmer

Samantha Stundtner

Lucy Hamann

CELLO

Ava Larsen, Principal

Gabrielle Peck, Principal

Luke Field, Principal

Reagan Laws

Maryveth Ochoa

Adela Ramirez

Carlos Recinos

Lukas Vater

Rebecca DeBoer

Ella Smullen

Kate Weisman

Rylee Stelpflug

Carolina Islas

Michael Montie

Jurnee Fisher

Ashley Bongard

BASS

Benjamin Levin, Principal

Gavriilia Fyrogeni, Assistant Principal

Alexander Matusiak

Lauren Gooden

Dmitriy Levit

FLUTE

Maribel Cortez

Sophie Gerew

Marisa Lehner

Zackary Muñoz

Jane Tretheway

PICCOLO

Sophie Gerew

Marisa Lehner

OBOE

Abby Debbink

Claire Fifarek

Lydia Morency

ENGLISH HORN

Abby Debbink

Claire Fifarek

CLARINET

Lilly Beane

Jordan Haney

Maggie Kidd

Rayna Kavalauskas

BASSOON

Ben Beumler

Gavin Hansen

Faith Weigand

Andie Wisniewski

CONTRABASSOON

Faith Weigand

HORN

Shaurya Bansal

Eli Hoffmann

Meera Rao

Anaka Velie

TRUMPET

Milo Ascher

Zachary Burgess

Oscar Endres

TROMBONE

Elizabeth Checkai

Emmeline Erickson

Erich Haefer

Austin Kempen

TUBA

Lane Wendorf

TIMPANI and PERCUSSION

Kyler Katanik

Rachel Shatzer

Nicolas Strichartz

Issac Visser

KEYBOARDS

Lucas LaBeau

Gabrielle Peck

Nicolas Strichartz

ACCORDION

Gabrielle Peck

Concertmasters and woodwind, brass, and percussion players are listed in alphabetical order.

DIETRICH BUXTEHUDE

b: c.1637; Oldesloe (now Bad Oldesloe) | d: May 9, 1707; Lübeck

Orchestrated by Carlos Chávez

Chaconne in E Minor

A Danish (or German) organist and composer, Buxtehude was one of the most important composers of organ music before J.S. Bach. Buxtehude gained an enormous reputation during his long tenure as the organist at St. Mary’s Church in the northern German city of Lübeck; his fame was such that the twenty-year-old J. S. Bach walked two hundred miles in 1705 just to hear the aged master perform.

Buxtehude originally gained his post at Lübeck in 1668, by marrying his predecessor’s youngest daughter. He later attempted to continue that tradition with J. S. Bach and Handel; both rejected the concept! 

Continuous variations on a harmonic progression, chaconnes, and passacaglias were popular in seventeenth-century Italy and southern Germany. Through his two chaconnes and a passacaglia, Buxtehude brought the form to northern Germany, thus influencing J.S. Bach and even in the late-nineteenth century, Johannes Brahms. This E minor Chaconne uses a four-measure descending bass line as the point of departure for a continuous series of thirty-one variations.

The leading Latin American composer of his generation, Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) completed the present orchestration of Buxtehude’s organ work in September of 1937. On the 29th of that month, the Mexican maestro conducted its first performance with the Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. Chávez explained that he was not trying to recreate the sound of an old or new organ with a symphony orchestra, but was merely trying to acquaint audiences with the music of Buxtehude.

In his 1983 biography of Chávez, Robert L. Parker explains: “The composer [Chávez] took advantage of the opportunity to further vary the existing variations by a change in the ensemble makeup of each second member of the many coupled pairs. Almost without exception, the ensemble is varied every four measures. Octave doubling brings out the full range of orchestral colors, but tuttis are used sparingly until the climactic conclusion.”

The American composer Colin McPhee once described Chávez’s setting as “simple, full-bodied, and eloquent, and worth comparing with the overgilded Bach arrangements of Stokowski.” Since Chavez’s death, this setting has often been offered in homage to his memory.

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR

b: August 15, 1875; London | d: September 1, 1912; Croydon

Ballade in A Minor, Op. 33

Known to musicians of his day as the “Black Mahler,” Coleridge-Taylor was once a celebrated model for black youth in England and America. In the forward to the 1969 edition of his biography, Blydon Jackson writes: “American Negroes who were born in the earlier years of this century grew up in black communities where the name of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was as well known then as now are such names as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X…Gentle as he was in manner, refined as was his calling, he was still a fierce apostle of human liberty and a crusader for the rights of man. He was a parable for the black consciousness of our present time.” (The composer should not be confused with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an 18th-century English poet and critic.)

Coleridge-Taylor was the illegitimate son of a doctor from Sierra Leone and an Englishwoman. Frustrated with his prospects for a decent medical practice in London, Dr. Taylor returned to Africa around the time of Samuel’s birth. It has been alleged that his mother received support from a member of the Coleridge family; true or not, that was the rationale for the first part of his hyphenated name.

Young Samuel studied violin with Joseph Beckwith and sang in church choirs. In 1890, he entered the Royal College of Music as a violin student and a budding composer. He subsequently studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, from whom he gained an affinity for Brahms-like sounds. Coleridge-Taylor won several composition scholarships and awards and was a colleague of Vaughan Williams, Holst, Ireland, and Bridge.

A year after leaving school, Elgar recommended him for a commission from the Three Choirs Festival. Written in 1898, Ballade was the result; it was enthusiastically received at its first performance in Gloucester on September 14, 1898. (In this same period, Coleridge-Taylor was also composing his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, the defining work of his career.)

Using the Brahmsian title Ballade, Coleridge-Taylor suggests the nature of his work as a free form, story-telling ballad. Although there is no story per se, the work unfolds as if telling a dramatic romance.

After a dramatic beginning, woodwinds suggest a gracefully arching idea as a foil. Muted upper strings voice a soothing melody that builds to a peak and then subsides. The unsettled opening motive returns, but is ultimately transformed amid orchestral jubilation.

Lulu’s Wish…

KURT WEILL

b: March 2, 1900; Desau, Germany | d: April 3, 1950; New York City

"September Song," from Knickerbocker Holiday

One of Weill’s less successful commercial ventures was the historical allegory of 1938, Knickerbocker Holiday. With  lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, the musical told of the tyrannical Peter Stuyvesant in his days as Governor of New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant’s iron rule became a message to the modern world about the consequences of suppression of freedom. September Song, the show’s most long-lived tune, was sung by Stuyvesant as he muses upon the problems encountered as an older man married to a young girl.

SCOTT DAVID FRANKEL

b: May 6, 1963; Cleveland, Ohio

"Pink," from War Paint

A product of the Interlochen Arts Camp and Yale University, Frankel has enjoyed a number of Broadway successes as a music director, conductor, and pianist. Working with lyricist Michael Korie, he triumphed again with War Paint, a 2016 musical about Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. Based on a 2003 book by Lindy Woodhead and a 2007 documentary The Powder and the Glory by Carol Grossman and Arnie Reisman, the musical opened on Broadway in the spring of 2017.

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER

b: March 22, 1948; London, United Kingdom

"As If We Never Said Goodbye," from Sunset Boulevard

Celebrated for the Broadway hits The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Evita, and Jesus Christ Superstar, Lloyd Webber is justly celebrated as a composer and impresario. He has produced 21 musicals, two film scores and a Requiem Mass…a very productive man. His 1993 musical Sunset Boulevard, is based on a 1950 film of the same title. The story recounts the tale of Norma Desmond, a faded silent film star who attempts a comeback with tragic effect.

JOHN KANDER

b: March 18, 1927; Kansas City, Missouri

"Maybe This Time," from Cabaret

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb first joined forces in 1962 and soon produced an enduring ballad, My Coloring Book. They subsequently worked for years, producing a chain of successes, including Chicago, Woman Of The Year, and Kiss of the Spider Woman Undoubtedly, their greatest triumph was Cabaret of 1966 and its film version of 1972. A dark evocation of eroding morality in pre-WWII Berlin, this cautionary tale retains its fascination even to the present day.

HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS

b: March 5, 1887; Rio de Janeiro | d: November 17, 1959; Rio de Janeiro

Bachiana Brasileiras No. 8 (1944)

A man of stunning compositional vigor, Villa-Lobos was a largely self-taught cellist-composer who brought the exotic flavor of Brazilian native and popular music into the mainstream of modern art music. Particularly noteworthy among his more than two thousand compositions are the individual forms which he invented, the Choros (Nos. 1-14) and the Bachiana Brasileiras (Nos. 1-9). Of these latter works, the first of which was written in 1932, the composer commented: “This is a special kind of musical composition based on an intimate knowledge of the great works of J.S. Bach and also on the composer’s affinity with the harmonic, contrapuntal and melodic atmosphere of the folklore of the northeastern region of Brazil. This composer considers Bach a universal and rich folklore source, deeply rooted in the folk music of every country in the world. Thus Bach is a mediator among all races.”

Between the World Wars, Villa-Lobos gained prominence in the Western World through his efforts in composition and music education. Although he was always associated with Brazil, he concertized through America and Europe, frequently gravitating toward Paris. He led the premiere of Bachianas Brasileira No. 8 in Rome on August 6, 1944. He dedicated the work to “Mindinha,” the nickname of his second wife, Arminda Neves d’Almeida, who promoted his music until her death in 1960.

Scored for large orchestra, the work is cast in four movements. It begins with a Preludio, a lyric movement that grows to an impressive close. Low instrumental voices come to the fore in the Aria (modinha). a Brazilian sentimental love song. Filled with the essence of South American folk dance, the Tocata (catira batida) is impelled by percussion in its outer sections. Elements of baroque counterpoint emerge most fully in the final Fuga.

In addition, we are grateful to these teaching artists who have worked with the orchestra for this concert:

• Frank Almond, Johnston Family Artist-in-Residence
• Nicole Gabriel, Music Librarian
• Nathan Hackett
• Paul Hauer, Senior Symphony String Advisor
• Rudi Heinrich
• Ji-Yeon Lee
• Jon McCullough-Benner
• Kevin Pearl
• Erin Pipal
• Don Sipe, Brass Studies Director
• Tobie Wilkinson
• Jonathan Winkle
• Adrien Zitoun

Thank you for attending today’s Founder’s Concert and Lulu’s wish.
Make-A-Wish® Wisconsin is honored to be partnering with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra in granting its 8,000th wish to Lulu. This important milestone comes during its 40th birthday year and is one of 405 wishes that will be granted this year alone in Wisconsin—more wishes than Make-A-Wish® Wisconsin has ever granted before.

There are so many to thank for making this wish possible. First of all, thank you to Linda Edelstein, Carter Simmons, Ron Oshima, Michelle Hoffman, Dan Duffy, Marna Bestul, and all of the staff at MYSO. Thank you, as well, to all of the musicians who are performing with Lulu today. Thank you to the team at the Bradley Symphony Center, Kesslers Diamonds for providing Lulu’s jewelry, About Face Salon & Boutique for doing Lulu’s hair and make-up, Kara Reese Photography for Lulu’s photoshoot, Lulu’s volunteer wish granters, Kristin Paul and Jill Patty, and Marcus Hotels & Resorts and Saint Kate The Arts Hotel for providing Lulu’s post-concert celebration.

As we continue to celebrate 40 years of wishes, please visit
wish.org/wisconsin to learn how you can be a part of more wishes like Lulu’s.

Donations to MYSO are the crucial funding source that allow us to nurture, challenge, and inspire young minds, profoundly changing lives and our community for the better. We are tremendously grateful for these important gifts.

This list recognizes gifts of $250 or more that were received from July 1, 2023, through January 16, 2024. We encourage you to call Emma Kunz, Philanthropy Operations Manager, at 414-267-2943, with questions or corrections—or to learn how to make a much-appreciated gift to MYSO.

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United Performing Arts Fund

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The Burke Foundation 

Maestoso ($20,000 - $99,999)

Anonymous
Laura & Mike Arnow
Bader Philanthropies, Inc.
Clair and Mary Baum
Tim and Sue Frautschi
Harri Hoffmann Family Foundation
Johnson Controls
Milwaukee Recreation Partnership for the Arts and Humanities

National Endowment for the Arts

The Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation

Con Fuoco ($10,000 - $19,999)

Anonymous
Bert L. & Patricia S. Steigleder Charitable Trust
Charles D. Jacobus Family Foundation
Digicorp, Inc.
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The Frank and Lucille Puncer Foundation
Greater Milwaukee Foundation - Adelaide F. Banaszynski Memorial Fund
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Milwaukee County Cultural Artistic and Musical Programming Advisory Council

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